The Demon Trapper of Umbagog: A Thrilling Tale of the Maine ForestsThompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
General
The Demon Trapper of Umbagog: A Thrilling Tale of the Maine Forests
Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction; Maine -- Fiction; Trappers -- Fiction
“My statement having been thus corroborated, and, as I am most happy
to find, without any of the expected interruptions, it now only
remains for me to say, that this indefatigable Mr. Phillips, becoming
perfectly convinced that the prisoner was a man of whom it was a
patriotic duty to rid the settlement, has, within the last two months,
made a journey into Canada; obtained a written official request from
the governor-general, addressed to the governor of New Hampshire,
for the delivery of Gaut Gurley, at the time when, on notice, the
proper officers would be in waiting to receive him; that our governor
has responded by issuing his warrant; which,” he continued, drawing
out a document, “I now, in this presence, deliver to the sheriff,
to be served, but only served, in case we fail--as I do not at all
anticipate--to secure the commitment and final conviction of the
prisoner, on the flagitious offence now under investigation, and loudly
demanding expiation under our own violated laws, in preference to
delivering him up for the punishment of other and less crying felonies.”
The prisoner and his counsel, on this new and unexpected development,
held an earnest whispered consultation. The latter had supposed, till
almost the last moment, that his opponent was intending only to bring
in another piece of what he deemed wholly irrelevant testimony, in the
shape of another gone-by transaction; and he was preparing another
storm of wrath for the judicial outrage. But, when he found that the
statement was a preliminary to a different and more alarming movement,
and especially when he saw placed in the sheriff’s hands a warrant for
delivering up his client to the British, to be tried for a former
felony, from the punishment of which, he feared, from what he had just
heard, there would be no escape, he was sadly nonplussed, and knew
not which way to turn himself. And it was not until Gaut, who, though
thus suddenly brought into a dilemma which he was little expecting,
was yet at no loss to decide on his course,--that of making every
possible effort to escape the more immediate pending danger, and then
of trusting to chance for eluding the more remote one just brought to
view,--it was not till Gaut, with assurances of the last being but a
miserable, trumped-up affair, had pushed and goaded him up to action,
that the dumbfounded attorney recovered his old confidence. He then
straightened back in his seat, and, with the air of one who has meekly
borne some imposition, or breach of privilege, till it can be borne no
longer, turned gruffly to his opponent, and said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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